Live Manchester City-Lyon 1-3, Champions League quarter-finals
The shot at Barça
Theoretician of the prevalence of tactics and the interchangeability of men, he allowed himself an indirect dig at his old Barça: he deployed in the center of the three-man defense the other Garcia of the game, the nineteen year old Eric, who was born and raised in Barcelona, studying as a child Puyol and Piqué, and who would like to return to Catalonia now, after the happy apprenticeship in England, thanks to the necessary re-foundation of the team canceled by Bayern. According to conspiracy, it is a bit as if his mentor Pep, giving the almost neophyte so much responsibility, had wanted to suggest him to stay at the City. According to tactical quirk, it was the desire to exploit its speed against the attacking pair Depay-Toko Ekambi. The reverse came after almost an hour, when Fernandinho, distorted as a central defensive right, was replaced by Mahrez. Walker and Cancelo became full backs and the 4-3-3 restored more established tactical habits.
Rudi and the Cascais scheme
The French Garcia, on the other hand, did not invent anything: he re-proposed the formation and roles of the return match with Juventus, in which the former winger Cornet, happily converted into a winger in midfield, was the maximum subversion of the clumsy defense of the City, with his jerks at speed, and the 31-year-old Brazilian Marçal, stopper on the center-left, a human spring, capable with the same ease of stopping his opponents and throwing his teammates to the millimeter. The scheme of the goal of the advantage, in the middle of the first half, was prepared during the tactical meeting in the afternoon at the Hotel Cascais Miragem, in the room overlooking the numerous bathers of August, who swam in the Atlantic while Lyon were studying the City: Marçal’s throw, Toko Ekambe’s shot to evade the offside mistaken by the distracted Walker, desperate recovery in a slip by the Catalan Garcia and perfidious left by Cornet in the goal left empty by Ederson’s exit.
The waste of talent
Much busier than the Brazilian goalkeeper, the Portuguese neighbor Lopes began performing in a series of low exits and punches. But the remarkable talent of the highly technical sprinter Sterling and the brilliant De Bruyne continued to seem wasted, in the midst of excess traffic: De Bruyne only shot on set pieces, Sterling dispensed in vain jewel assists. Gabriel Jesus, a dozing center forward, showed signs of awakening coinciding with the aforementioned change of form. The draw was therefore not accidental: Sterling invented it, with a percussion and a back assist, De Bruyne signed it with a sharp left. But City, if they managed to crush Lyon gradually and wasted yet another Sterling creation with Jesus, they inevitably opened up to the humble Italian counterattack of Rudi Garcia, who got the change right, with the entrance by Dembélé for Depay. It was the encore of PSG, which with Atalanta had found the hero Choupo Mouting on the bench.
The French curse
Thanks to a lost ball from the French Laporte, the French were able to cheer for the shot of the new entrant and the ball passed under Ederson’s legs. The Var validated, after a short suspense. Then the cruel law of retaliation hit the best of the City: the wrong goal by Sterling, on Jesus’ low-shot assist from the right, belongs to the category of horrors: he remained on the ground with his head in his hands, Guardiola has realized that once again he would not be able to win the Champions League away from Barcelona. For the avoidance of doubt, it was Dembélé again who closed the matter: another counter-attack and a resistible right-foot from Aouar, deposited by the clumsy rebuff of the bungler Ederson on the relentless foot of the punisher. Lyon, who had already proved unsurpassed for City in the last edition of the Champions League (one draw and one defeat) complete the surprise duo of semi-finalists with Leipzig. Pep goes home. And he can’t blame others.
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